Field of the Disclosure
The present disclosure relates to a technology for adjusting an exposure amount for a pixel for image formation.
Description of the Related Art
In recent years, printing by using an electrophotography image forming apparatuses has widely spread, and achieving a uniform density on a printed image and reducing the consumed amount of toner have been demanded. Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2014-165776 discloses a configuration which identifies a character part and an edge part thereof within an image and performs gamma correction on a density difference between the edge part and the remaining part. Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-043315 discloses a configuration which, in a case where adjacent image regions are different in density, corrects a change in density occurring in a boundary part between the image regions on basis of densities of pixels after image processing is performed.
On the other hand, an image forming apparatus may cause an edge effect which increases the density of an edge part of an image region.
Applying the configuration disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2014-165776 or Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-043315 to an edge effect for performing a toner reduction process on basis of a higher density may excessively reduce the exposure amount and excessively reduce the amount of toner. On the other hand, performing a toner reduction process on basis of a lower density may cause insufficient reduction of the exposure amount and may possibly not suppress the edge effect effectively.
The present invention provides an image forming apparatus and an image processing apparatus for properly adjusting the exposure amount of pixels.